My customer asked me to upgrade their Windows 2003 web server last week, as we know, Windows Server 2003 extended support ended on July 14,2015, Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003. Unfortunately, I noticed the Web server is Windows 2003 x86 server, there is no way to in-place upgrade it to x64, the only way is upgrade it to Windows Server 2008 x86, it will give a couple years to prepare web server migration plan at least. Let’s follow step by step to upgrade it.

Ever need to check the complexity of a password that will be used in AD? Ever need to import a list of users or reset their passwords in AD from a predefined list that has been given to you? I have updated my code for my AD Password Complexity check. Check it out.

This sounds scenario sounds pretty simple, and theoretically it is. It’s also a common request. Someone comes to you and says, I have members in one group and I need them copied to another group. Sure, no problem. But what they forgot to mention is that the source group is in a different domain and has users and groups from the same or different domain than their target group.

The morning of day 2 started off a little different for myself. Some of the media and Veeam Vanguards attended a media and session where they disclosed some information about Veeam and some of the new products. After that it was a free for all! Which breakout session to attend, do I have time to see all the vendor presentations!? Read on to see what I attended.

Today, I tried to troubleshooting windows 2016 mysterious shutdown for my client, I found it was NT Authority\System that shutdown the system because the windows 2016 server license was expired, this is easy enough to solve the issues, I thought.

In this post I’m going to touch on a few basic components that make Veeam 9.5 and Windows Server 2016 a winning combination. I will be presenting at a #VeeamOn breakout session on Thursday. We’ll be talking about using a Microsoft’s Storage Spaces Direct technology as a Veeam Backup and Restore File Repository. Which Operating and Filesystem do you think I’ll recommend?

I think we’ve all heard of Veeam by now, the most innovative and leading backup provider for virtual and physical environments. Regardless of hardware vendor, and regardless of hardware type, rackmount or hyper converged, it just works. But why is Veeam 9.5 and Windows Server 2016 a winning combination together? The two companies have worked hard together to simply and enhance existing technology not only to decrease backup and restore times, but to with storage technology to allow you to save space without deduplication and to guarantee the integrity of your data at rest. How? You’ll find out if you keep reading.

I’ve seen this pop up a few times in forums and even in a few SCCM implementations. It’s actually a fairly simple fix if you know which log files to look at. Check your logs and/or keep reading this post to see how to fix the wonderful Microsoft Software License Terms have not been completely downloaded WSUS Issue.

Having an email in your inbox outlining which machines in your organization that are going to be patched in the next day or two is every service owner/managers dream. So simple and proactive. The email also outlines when the machines are going to be patched and displays how many outstanding updates there are. This is a summary of what will happen in the days to come. Keep reading to see how you can dive into seeing the details of what is about to happen in your organization.

If you’ve ever run an installation of SQL Server, you’ll know it’s a database, and databases love, love, love memory. By design and by default, Microsoft SQL Server thinks it’s the only process on the system and is therefore given all the available memory and CPUs. As a best practice, I limit this. Here is the script I use to edit these values.

Over the last few years, we here at TriCon Elite have been using what we call “The Patch Solution”. Boring name, but it also fits its purpose. Who loves deploying patches and reporting? There are many ways to patch your Windows Servers, but our slim, simple, PowerShell solution was created to solve a few key areas, for free. It has been released to the community for quite some time, but keep reading on why you should use it too!

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Checkyourlogs is a community blogging platform that focuses on the most current Microsoft and surrounding technologies. All of our bloggers are real-world experts, Microsoft MVPs, Cisco Champions, Veeam Vanguards and more. All views expressed on this site are independent.